Take the Sky

"Take my love, take my land,Take me where I can not stand
I don't care cause i'm still free 
you can't take the sky from me."
- Firefly Theme Song

This quilt was a lot of fun to make! It's a baby quilt for friends of mine, J&R, who went with a space-themed nursery for their baby girl. They're fans of sci-fi shows so I wanted to bring that into the quilt and make it extra special. I've named it Take the Sky, pulling from the theme song to the TV show Firefly, one of J's favorites.

Here's the front & back of the quilt - you can see I dug out all the space-like fabrics I owned (and borrowed from Momm too!) to make this gift. Fabrics feature: Star Wars, Harry Potter, general space & planets, astronauts & space shuttles, and constellations!

I pulled coordinating colors and all the black & star print fabrics I could find in my stash. I made some wonky star blocks to start, along with the crescent moon using a technique I learned from the July NQM Block of the Month Club. 

Then I pieced the Big Dipper constellation, the paper pieced TARDIS (free pattern from FandomInStitches) and drew my own paper pieced pattern for the Star Trek insignia block. 

a glow in the dark bee!

Then it was time to puzzle piece the elements together filling in blank spots with fabric, randomly pieced segments and fussy cut space bits. I love joining these together to make the whole and it turned out pretty cohesive at the end.

Next it was on to quilting, no easy feat with such a mix of blocks and fandoms. I started by stitching in phrases to add some extra nerdiness. Things like: Expecto Patronum, I aim to misbehave, To infinity and beyond, wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey, Beam me up Scotty, Use the Force, a golden snitch & Nova Corps symbol. Then I personalized the center moon block with the baby's name and had fun filling in the rest of the quilt with stars, stippling, and general free-motion fun using several Aurifil threads.

I got to meet baby A and gift this quilt the the other week and am happy to know it will be well loved by the whole family. They'll have fun searching for the special details stitched into the quilt over the coming months & years. Baby quilts are pure joy to make & gift! Love it well A: Live Long & Prosper! 
 Linking up with Needle & Thread Thursday with My Quilt Infatuation & From Bolt to Beauty Finally a Finish.

Washington Quilt Shuffle

One of the perks of my job is getting to talk about quilts to everybody, & I do mean everybody: kids, tours, daily visitors, adults, workshops, classes, family, other quilt friends, coworkers, strangers in town, etc. It's even better when I can travel and bring quilting to a wider audience. That's exactly what happened earlier this month when a coworker & I traveled to the Tacoma, WA area to speak at the West Sound Quilt Guild! We shipped 12 quilts from the Museum collection and headed westward for an adventure. 

Airplane views over MT or WA

Our actual presentation and talk at the guild was so fun. We had a great crowd who enjoyed seeing the quilts up close & in person as L & I talked about the Museum, our programs, the quilts, and how we strive to honor today's quilter. We brought several quilts by Washington artists, and one came to the meeting! What a joy to speak with the artist in person, and have her speak about her work to the guild.

We had two fabulous hostesses from the guild for our stay. J provided transportation and local stories as we adventured through Gig Harbor, to several great quilt shops (including the Quilt Barn which had the most Batiks we've ever seen!), crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and toured the WA State History Museum. 

Another Guild member, B, was our hostess overnight and she treated us to homemade breakfasts, excellent hot chocolate, quilt stories and dragons! Thanks ladies for being so kind and welcoming.

We even got to see a glimpse of Mt. Rainier on the way back to the airport!

March Adventures

So in my family we like to stretch birthdays over 3 days: the day before, day of & day after for  the full birthday celebration. This year I managed to spread my Birthday shenanigans over most of a week and enjoyed every bit of them.  :D  It also makes it easier to celebrate with work & friend schedules when you spread it out.

I started with a trip to Nashville to see Anastasia the Broadway musical. It was so good! A great adaptation of the animated movie into a stage show, good casting and some cool set designs too. 

The weather was finally Spring-like and the cherry blossoms are stellar so this year so it was fun to hit up the farmer's market & grab an ice cream cone after the show.
 

Continued on with a couple days off from work that were filled with happy mail birthday cards, starting a new quilt project, Captain Marvel (which I highly recommend), a cookie walk, steak dinner, brunch with J, lunch & ice cream with friends, outing to the secret park & sunshine, games with E & V, and movie night with E. Phew! All in all a fantastic B!day and a looking forward to this next year.

March was also jammed with National Quilting Day event at work. I got to play Vanna and bring out the Needle & Thread for the official kickoff which was exciting! 

Gilbert (my machine) came home from the repair shop ready to go and it's been so nice to get back to stitching on multiple projects. Quick trip to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville was nice too - great exhibits on Van Gogh & contemporaries from the Mellon Collection and a fab exhibit of Dorothea Lange's photographs.


So here's to all the March kids & all my birthday buddies!

QuiltCon in the Music City

                     (this is post 1 from QuiltCon)

Last weekend I headed East to Nashville, picking up Momm from the airport as we headed for QuiltCon and a quilty weekend together!

We haven't been to QuiltCon since the first one in Austin. Nashville is a fun city and we had a good time packing in all we could see of quilts & vendors & new friends & mini quilt swaps.









We made buttons to trade this year based on our Instagram names: @bumblybzs & @RNquilter. Mine features a bumblebee that I stitch into my quilts, and Momm used one of her quilts in her design. This was such a fun way to chat with people as we wandered the hall, and to remember who we met & their social media at the end of the day.

Since Nashville is only a couple hours away, I brought quilts to put on our hotel beds for ambiance. :) 

We met a lot! of lovely people, Heather from Crimson Tate, Victoria Findlay Wolfe, Marianne Fons & Sue Reich at Quilts of Valor, the Aurifil team, Amy Milne at Quilt Alliance, @Shoppershaz, and many more quilters, enthusiasts & creative souls! Thanks to everyone for being so nice and lovely all weekend.

 Between raindrops we managed to squeeze in some exploring downtown, spotting some great murals & great gelato!

gelato break at the terrace firepits

We also made it out to the TN state museum to see their new quilt exhibit: Between the Layers: Art and Story in TN Quilts :which was cool. I mean, visiting other quilt museums is part of what I do. ;)

Star Variation quilts in the exhibit

Quilt by Lillian Beattie, made when she was 100 years old!

Momm was lucky & won one of the new Ruby Olfa cutters! And we both won some thread playing Aurifil Jenga.

We got off the wait list & into the Free Motion class with Christina Cameli @afewscraps on Saturday night. This was so much fun! 3 hours went really quick as we learned some excellent FMQ ideas and practiced creating showboats, clusters, layering, divide & conquer, and blends. I'm so looking forward to using these ideas in my own quilts!

I can also finally show the mini quilt I made for the #mqgminiswap as I swapped with my partner @sunchaserquilts during QuiltCon. 

We ran into each other the first day, and kept crossing paths until our designated swap time. So much fun to meet in person and now I can add this lively mini to my wall.

We're holding the quilts we received

Now it's time to follow the direction from our newest, comfy, quilty shirts (from Patchwork Threads) & MAKE QUILTS!

Hanging Out Sloth Style

Sweet friend M asked me to make baby quilts for her soon-to-be twin nieces and of course I said yes! You know, readers, that I love to make baby quilts. 

She asked for sloths, because her sister loves them, and when I showed her this pattern by Elizabeth Hartman, M was all in. We talked colors (no pink, something soft) and then I went to my favorite fabric shop (Hancock's of Paducah) to hunt up some sloth-appropriate fabrics.

signature bee spotted!

I made one block for each quilt and extended the tree trunk taller to fill the space better.  Added background fabric to make the quilt size a bit larger too.




I've heard that these patterns can be time consuming to make, and while there are lots of little pieces for the faces, it stitched up really smoothly! I spent a night cutting allll the pieces for both quilts, and then took another day or so to piece the tops. So worth it!

I also mirror imaged one of them so they face in opposite directions, because twins- same, but different! That's why there are two different background colors. The backings are the same fabric - a wintry tree print with the absolute right colors - and I bound them in the opposite background fabric for an extra pop.

Snooze I

Snooze II

Quilting these was extra fun!  I free motioned the sloths fur-like spikes, wood grain in the trees and leaves in the background - all in coordinating Aurifil threads. Hoping M loves them, and that her sister and new nieces love them well!

Linking up with Studio Sew of Course for the 2018 Quarter 4 Finish A Long. Original Q4 post is here.

Capriccio

Capriccio::a lively piece of music, that is free in form::

I'm so happy to share this quilt with you readers as I just love how it turned out! I was inspired to try something new in my quilting this summer and wanted to experiment with some improv stitching. I was inspired by Sherri Lynn Wood's book & style in starting with the wedge shapes - then just let the fabrics direct the process from there!

Constructing bits of wedges here and there & rearranging them on the design wall took some time - so many possibilities and ways to try and put them in place.  

I was using fabric from my stash, and had limited amounts of some colors, which also helped determine size/shapes. 

The fun of improv is working within the limits of colors, or fabrics or quilt size!

Starting to piece segments together and play with the layout took time. I was guessing for a lot of the white background and kept adding bits, or ripping seams to add something else back into the mix before re-adding the background. Free cutting the curves and stitching those together was a fun challenge in parts!

Once the top was finished, I moved right into basting it, and then stalled out before jumping into quilting it. I stared at it for awhile until realizing that starting at it wouldn't get it quilted. Also, I was determined to finish this in time to enter into QuiltCon - nothing like a deadline to get you going - am I right?!

Okay, here's the deal - I love to free-motion quilt. It's fun to doodle designs and I'm a big fan of matching the right quilting to the design of the top. However, figuring out how to quilt a quilt can be tricky. 

For Capriccio, I had an idea of one design in one place - echo lines around the bottom right sliver - and so that's where I started. I don't always have a full plan in mind when I start stitching, but find that once I start, more ideas come to mind and it starts to flow. I used Aurifil threads in a variety of colors for the quilting blending & matching colors with a few pops.

I knew fairly early, that I didn't want the quilt to be square, so I rounded the left corner. Getting that curve was a bit unnerving, until I discovered the sweep of the curve I wanted matched perfectly to a hula hoop I had in the house! Wouldn't you know - the hula hoop was easy to use as a 'ruler' with the rotary cutter and made that curve a snap to trim.

Thankfully, I finished just in time to get some photos in the daylight and enter this one into QuiltCon, but it didn't make the cut. Having that deadline to aim for really got me fired up to finish this so I'm not complaining! Happy to have it completed, and to check it off my Finish A Long 2018 Quarter 4 list as well! My orignal Q4 list can be found here. Linking up at Studio Sew of Course.

Snoopy the Flying Ace

Sharing a recent finish with you today! A friend of mine, who loves Snoopy, pieced this charming quilt in anticipation for her first grandchild.  She asked me to quilt it for her so it'd be ready to snuggle when the baby arrived.

Don't you love baby quilts - they are such a happy thing to make and gift and I was extra happy to quilt this one.

I kept the quilting simple - adding some woodgrain texture to the doghouse, loopy clouds in the border and keeping the grass in keeping with the comic-style, as well as my trademark bee. The striped binding makes the perfect finishing touch! I found out this morning, they had a baby girl so I know there will be plenty of baby snuggles for my friend & her family! Yay!